Photo Break: Reddish egret

A while ago, I tossed up a Photo Break post describing how egrets and herons typically fish for prey; i.e. they stand stock-still in the shallows or on a perch until something swims by, at which point the bird’s head darts in and out of the water at incredible speed and comes up holding food. I mentioned that there was one notable exception to this general rule in the Gulf Coast area.

Pictured above is the exception, courtesy of The Ding.

Reddish egret, feeding

A reddish egret also fishes in the shallows, but it doesn’t stand remotely still. It spreads its wings out parallel to the surface and runs/hops frantically for a few yards in a straight line, then turns around and does the same thing along its previous path, a few feet to the side. The first pass is to scare fish outward to either side of it, using both its legs and the shadows of its wings; the second pass is to pick up the newly gathered crowds of fish on one side of the path it just cleared. As a method of fishing, it’s considerably more…aggressive, no?